This week, former prosecutor and columnist Andy McCarthy suggested that New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham should face federal prosecution for her petition to suspend constitutional gun rights in her state using the same regulation the Justice Department used to indict former President Donald Trump.
Andrew McCarthy, Former Assistant United States Attorney of the Southern District, New York, wrote a column for National Review on Monday explaining how Grisham should be charged under the same federal statute, Section 241, that Special Counsel Jack Smith uses to prosecute Trump.
McCarthy claimed that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D., N.M.) and her subordinates have conspired to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Americans in New Mexico in the free exercise and enjoyment of their Second Amendment rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States; therefore, under Section 241, she should be fined or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
“Grisham’s admission that she expects to be challenged in court emphasizes both her criminal intent and the well-established nature of the rights she has decided to suspend.”
Mayor Lujan Grisham issued an emergency public health order on Friday restricting the right to carry guns in public across Albuquerque and the neighboring Bernalillo County for at least 30 days after three children were killed in shootings.
Conservatives, constitutional scholars, and her state’s attorney general strongly opposed the action immediately after it was announced.
McCarthy argues that despite Democrats’ prattle throughout the Trump administration about upholding norms, they’ve adopted the “banana-republic practice” of using criminal law as a weapon in political conflict.
“Moreover, what Grisham has unabashedly done in defying the Second Amendment’s prohibition on governmental denial of the fundamental right of self-defense is more clearly a civil-rights violation than what Trump allegedly did to injure voting rights.”
McCarthy told Fox News Digital that he has written multiple times about how dangerous the Civil Rights Division is and how Congress should defund it. He also said that strong Republican Attorneys General who will use the civil rights legislation to safeguard the rights of federal citizens are necessary.
“Given that special counsel Smith is, I believe, using it in a very political way to do something Section 241 is not designed to do, I thought it would be a good time to suggest an appropriate use of it,” McCarthy said.
The office of Lujan Grisham did not respond to requests for comment.